Denver, CO

May 11, 2018May 21, 2018

“Gentleness” by Christopher Records

Gentleness

If you treat words and people
With the gentleness that befits their fragility
Minding the wooden force of each finger
Each axial, metallic turn of the tongue
Averting eyes, turning the mortar in its bowl
To grind each syllable into the finest whisper
So that they don’t create discomfort,
Alertness, alarm, the awareness of being in a body
Whose sounds are the leaking and crushing and snapping
Of one piece against another
You’ll still remember, every now and then,
That breakability is built into the machine
That it’s coded to buckle and burst
And the difference between the operation of saying
The word “fracture” and the operation of its reality
In a human bone
Is a matter of location and scale
But they have the same choreography
And all choreography is
Is location and scale
Modulated, modeled, mediated by a human body
Applying the necessary amount of force
To enact the appearance of gentleness
To itself
And the eyes of others.

Christopher Records works in the non-profit sector in Los Angeles. He is a grant-writer for a large foundation that does work on commemorating and combating genocide, and a community organizer for a small organization that works on refugee access to higher education. He is also working on a PhD in Education at Claremont Graduate University. Christopher was raised and educated in Riverside, California.